


How(e) Dreadfully Wangsty

by Ywain Penbrydd (penbrydd)



Series: A Comedy of Assholes (Rhapsody, etc.) [13]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Angst, Bad Decisions, Drunkenness, F/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 06:26:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7303153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penbrydd/pseuds/Ywain%20Penbrydd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate Howe has had it bad for Elissa Cousland, since they were kids. But, after the Blight, she's gone, and everyone says his father killed her, but he's not convinced. First he's going to restore the Howe holdings to Howe hands, and then he's going to clear his father's name... except not. Now, he's stuck in a filthy cell, dreaming of the woman he once loved.</p><p>Forgive me the punny title. <s>And turn down the Morrissey and back away from the bottle, Nate.</s></p>
            </blockquote>





	How(e) Dreadfully Wangsty

Nathaniel had been nine, then. He thought maybe Elissa had been eight? Didn't matter, really. He'd fallen for her pretty quickly after a rough start that opened with her sneaking up on him with a knife and telling him she didn't have to like him. After about a week of their fathers' interminable political manoeuvring, they'd practically been attached at the hip, whispering in dim corners as they crept around after her brother Fergus, trying to lure him into ridiculously obvious traps the servants kept disassembling, behind them. They were children with no concept of the world their parents inhabited, and no real desire to learn too much of it.

But, Rendon Howe was not a forgiving man, and as his oldest son grew up to look more and more like the Hero of River Dane, his plans fell apart, as did his marriage. Finally, Nathaniel was sent away, just to get his face out of the house, and further up the northern coast, Elissa was forbidden to follow. For years, he snuck short letters out, when no one was looking, and she wrote back freely, even if only half her letters arrived. But, when the Blight came, her letters stopped.

Nathaniel returned to find them dead -- all of them. His family, her family... Fergus, it seemed, had made it back from the shitshow at Ostagar, at least, but Fergus had never had a kind word for him. He wasn't going to try to play on a sympathy they'd never had, now. Instead, he went out and got drunk for days on end. Dressed like any other refugee, hair loose and greasy in his face, he watched Amaranthine move around him. On the third day, he'd started hearing the rumours -- that his father had been in league with Teyrn Loghain, and wasn't that a joke. Rendon couldn't stand Loghain, and Nathaniel was the whole of the reason. And then the rumours came that his father had massacred the Couslands, and that was just too much. Rendon had adored Teyrn Cousland and Lady Bryland, at least as much as he'd liked anyone, by that point. They'd been working on an alliance, together, that would have ... he didn't remember, actually, but it was something to do with a trade agreement with the Marches. Which was the surface reason he'd been packed off to squire for Ser Rodolphe at the utterly ludicrous age of _twenty_. What an insult. What abject bullshit. Still, he'd gotten good at something, over there, and now he was going to put it to its proper use, and Vigil's Keep would be back in the hands of the Howes, where it belonged.

That went about as well as any other drunken plan he'd had in the preceding decade. He'd seriously injured a number of the guards, and it had taken four of them to carry him, kicking and thrashing, to this filthy cell. He'd been here, before. There was no way out this time, just as there'd been no way out last time. And the guards talked about him like he wasn't even there -- how he'd been defending the old man's slaughter of the Teyrn's entire family, and this was the second wave of betrayal they'd predicted. How it'd be better if the higher-ups would just let them kill him and be done with it.

And for all he knew there was no way his father had done this, all he could think of when the subject came up was Elissa. She wouldn't have gone easily -- she was a fighter. Whoever had done this had surely paid dearly, but not as dearly as she and he had. If he'd stayed -- If he'd stayed, he'd be dead, too. He'd have been there, since her family had the more substantial title, and he wasn't so much the fool to think he wouldn't have fought to the death beside her. And the thing that gnawed at him was that he wasn't sure that wouldn't have been a better end than this. He was waiting for death at the hands of the Wardens who'd framed and killed his father to take his lands and title.

He'd heard the shouting, when the mage was brought in. Some shrill apostate the guards all flipped their wrists when they discussed. But, the mage would be kept in the keep. He was still out here in one of the outbuildings. And as he pulled the straw of the floor closer around him for a bit of warmth, he decided he hated apostates even more than the Chantry generally encouraged. Some squalling maleficar was probably sleeping in his bed. 

Why hadn't he waited until he was sober, at least? If he'd done this well utterly pissed, he probably could have taken the keep single-handed, sober. Okay, maybe not. Principally, though, he'd at least have gotten killed, instead of shut in this blighted cell. Possibly literally blighted, the more he thought about it, and that was just gross. And speaking of gross, another reason he shouldn't have done this drunk. The piss-pot they'd left him was nearly full and the reek of it was dizzying, as he went to pay his respects again. A day and a half of hangover piss would do that to a room. Why had he been drunk for this?

But, he knew. He was drunk, because he couldn't face it, sober. The whole situation was horrifying, nauseating, and he'd needed a few to even bring himself to look at the place, never mind actually trying to go inside. He wanted his bed, his sister's dolls, his mother's silver. And, maybe, to kick a hole in a portrait of his father, just on general principle. Just because he didn't believe Rendon would do _this_ didn't mean the man kept a happy house. But, that was between him and his father. That was a family matter.

He came back to himself resting his forehead on his arm on the corner of the wall, knob still in his hand, as he thought again of Elissa. He'd been nearly twenty, when he'd kissed her goodbye, after their engagement dinner, and said he'd see her again in two weeks. Not ten days later, he'd been on a ship to the Marches, with barely a chance to tell her where he was going. But, a decade ago, he'd kissed her. He'd done a lot more than just kiss her, but that last kiss stayed with him. The way she'd smiled. The way her lips had been sweet with that northern spiced wine. He'd wanted to take her back to bed, right then, and nevermind the weeks he was to spend at home, before the wedding. They'd be married, at last, as they'd always meant to be, and nothing would come between them again.

Nathaniel tried to reach back and hold on to that certainty, even knowing, as he did, that she must be dead, like all the rest. He'd been away ten years, almost twelve, and it had been too long the day after he set out. She'd written fairly regularly -- stories from home, tales of her other suitors and how she'd found them lacking in comparison, and always little hints of how things would be when he could finally come home. He'd usually spent a bit of the next morning limping, after her letters had come in. He wasn't supposed to be carrying on a romance -- distracted from his work, Ser Rodolphe insisted -- but, Nathaniel wouldn't be discouraged, just driven to more and more arcane methods of sending and receiving mail.

Once, she'd sent him a tiny tin of orichalcum salve, with a lurid description of what it would do and how she'd learnt to use it. He'd forced himself to vomit, after supper, and left the pail in the hall with a 'please go away' sign on the door, and spent the rest of the evening in bed and the next day sleeping it off. Even now, the thought of the things she'd described made him twitch against his fist. The thought of her broad fingers inside him, rubbing that salve thickly against that spot that made him pant and whimper for her -- he'd taken the salve and touched himself with it, just as she described, the first time he'd put his own fingers where she'd so often put hers, and he'd moaned just like he had for her the first time she touched him there. And now, his hand slid idly down his length, trying to soothe the flesh driven to respond to these memories.

And he was leaning over a full chamberpot, in a cell, with a guard who wouldn't look away boring holes in his back. But, this was as close to privacy as he was going to get. The Warden-Commander was due tomorrow, they'd said, and then he'd be put to death. What did it really matter any more? It mattered just enough that he'd do this here, bent over a chamberpot, instead of stripped bare, lying on his back on the straw, crying out her name as he pleasured himself as thoroughly as he was able. Even now, that was a bit much.

His breath came quicker, and he tried to ignore the taste of the filthy air, as he remembered what she'd felt like pushing him back onto her bed, her weight settling onto him. She'd always been heavier than he was, and he loved the comfort of her weight holding him down, even when they sparred and he lost. He'd lost often, and not because he was throwing matches. He hadn't managed to win once until he was fifteen, because even though he knew her favourite moves, she had nearly no tells for which one was coming. She, on the other hand, could read him like an open book with dog-eared pages. He thought Rodolphe might've beaten that out of him, but he'd never get a chance to find out.

No, no. Happy thoughts. Sexy thoughts.

The way she smiled at him when she pinned him to the ground and pinched his ass. The feeling of her hand in his lap over supper. The way she thought he was useless on the field and excellent in bed, and she'd tease him that he should undertake politics with his knob, stealing pillow-talk from all the pretty ladies in power. That's what she'd use him for if she were Teyrna, she'd said. He'd suggested if they were to be wed anyway, she should probably find a use for him, and she'd slid a hand between his legs to squeeze his balls gently, telling him she had a hundred uses for him, most of all that she loved him.

That memory brought tears to his eyes, now, even as his hand quickened over his skin, and he swallowed the lump in his throat as he tried to hold on to the feel of her touching him, kissing him, having her way with him in almost every way she desired. (There'd been a few he'd turned down because he wasn't quite that flexible and the illustrations in that Antivan book of hers made it look like they'd break something if they tried.) In all the years since, there'd been no one he'd trusted as much as he had her -- no one he'd let just use him in so many wild and wonderful ways. Although, the things he'd gotten up to... he'd meant to bring those home to her, too.

But, really, he missed that last kiss. The spice of her lips. The beautiful filth she'd whispered in his ear. The soft, heavy curves of her in his hands. Maker, the taste of her...

His thighs trembled and clenched as he spattered the corner of the wall, wringing the last drops onto the edge of the chamberpot. His breath quickened to stuttering gasps, and the foulness of the air brought him back to himself. With shaking hands, he closed his trousers and curled up in the pile of straw, in the other corner, still facing the wall. The Warden-Commander was due tomorrow morning. He'd be back with her soon enough.


End file.
